Monday, October 17, 2016

Redemption

WaPo has an inspiring story of redemption, "The White Flight of Derek Black".

It paints an intimate portrait of Derek Black, a man groomed to inherit the intellectual mantle of white nationalism in the US, as he confronted facts, and changed his mind.

He had always based his opinions on fact, and lately his logic was being dismantled by emails from his Shabbat friends. They sent him links to studies showing that racial disparities in IQ could largely be explained by extenuating factors like prenatal nutrition and educational opportunities. They gave him scientific papers about the effects of discrimination on blood pressure, job performance and mental health. He read articles about white privilege and the unfair representation of minorities on television news.

The most important takeaway for me was the courage (to oppose the only family he knew and clearly loved) and intellectual honesty it must have taken to change his opinion on something so central to his belief-system, in full public-glare.